Archive-name: [***]
Posting-frequency: monthly
Last-modified: Apr 1999
The scot.* hierarchy: newsadmins' FAQ
Scot.* Netnews Committee
committee@scot.news-admin.org
The latest edition of this FAQ can be retrieved from:
<http://www.scot.news-admin.org/newsadmins-faq.html>
This document is for newsadmins who wish to configure their news systems for scot.* newsgroups. It is posted monthly to news.admin.hierarchies and scot.newsgroups.announce.
There are other documents for users. These are How to Propose New scot.* Newsgroups (or Changes to the Rules) and The Scot.* Netnews Committee (Responsibilities and Election).
These too are posted monthly to news.admin.hierarchies and scot.newsgroups.announce.
The scot.* news hierarchy contains groups for the discussion of topics relating to matters in Scotland and/or matters Scottish. It is not a local hierarchy; it is are intended for worldwide distribution.
The hierarchy started up in 1982, and has been under administration since the establishment of the Scot.* Netnews Committee (SNC) in December 1998. The SNC can be contacted at committee@scot.news-admin.org. All official control messages are issued from control@scot.news-admin.org, an address operated by a member of the SNC.
Please note first of all that all official newgroup, rmgroup and checkgroups messages are signed with PGP. This enables newsadmins to automate the handling of control messages whilst at the same time being sure that they are not honouring any forgeries.If you wish to take any or all of the scot.* groups, you will need to configure your control.ctl file (if you use INN), or your controlperm file (if you use CNews). Below we give the recommended configurations if you decide to take a full feed, both for newsadmins who use PGP to verify control messages, and for those who don't. It is of course for each newsadmin to decide whether or not they wish to take a full feed. The only advice we would offer relates to PGP, and that advice is to be safe and use it.
To do this you must first add the PGP public key of scot-control to your news system's public keyring. This key is available at <http://www.scot.news-admin.org/signature.html>. Or by e-mail from: <control@scot.news-admin.org> with a Subject: line "PGP Public Key Request". Further information about PGP is available from <http://www.dnai.com/~wussery/pgpfaq1.html>
Add the following lines to your control.ctl configuration file:
newgroup:control@scot.news-admin.org:scot.*:verify-control@scot.news-admin.org
rmgroup:control@scot.news-admin.org:scot.*:verify-control@scot.news-admin.org
checkgroups:control@scot.news-admin.org:scot.*:verify-control@scot.news-admin.org
Add the following lines to your control.ctl configuration file
newgroup:control@scot.news-admin.org:scot.*:doit
rmgroup:control@scot.news-admin.org:scot.*:doit
checkgroups:control@scot.news-admin.org:scot.*:doit
Add the following line to your controlperm configuration file
scot control@scot.news-admin.org nrc p scot-control
Add the following line to your controlperm configuration file
scot control@scot.news-admin.org nr y
At present the only moderated scot.* group is scot.newsgroups.announce. It is envisaged that all moderators' e-mail addresses will be mirrored to moderators.isc.org Thus the relevant files should be configured as follows:
scot.*:%s@moderators.isc.org
scot.* %s@moderators.isc.org
The website for scot.* Newsgroups is at <http://www.scot.news-admin.org/>.
The scot.* checkgroups control message is issued on the 1st and the 15th of each month. It normally shows up only on the newsgroup " control.checkgroups". A current list of groups is also posted monthly to scot.newsgroups.announce and scot.newsgroups.discuss, and is kept up-to-date at <http://www.scot.news-admin.org/docs/checkgroups.html>. This list is in the correct format to be fed into the "docheckgroups" shell script shipped with INN.
If the upstream provider supplying your main feed does not have the scot.* hierarchy on its server, contact the newsadmin of any server, preferably a nearby server (try "ping -s" or "traceroute"), that does have the hierarchy, and ask if they will exchange articles with you.
You may also request a feed from [***].
FAQ updated 20 July 1999 <Home>